The punitive measures and conservative statement came after four days of “painful” talks in Canterbury aimed at moving the world’s 85 million-strong Anglican fellowship beyond deep divisions over homosexuality between liberals and conservatives.

An agreement, published on Thursday evening, said the US Episcopal church’s acceptance of same-sex marriage represented “a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of our provinces on the doctrine of marriage”.

In a passage that dismayed liberal Anglicans, the agreement explicitly added: “The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union. The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching.”

Under the agreement, the US Episcopal church has been banned from representation on key bodies and barred from voting on issues relating to doctrine or strategy for three years. However, it will remain a member of the Anglican communion.

The Presiding Bishop of TEC says that there’s no going back from its pro-gay position. I don’t see how it avoids being thrown out of the Anglican Communion three years from now. But we’ll see.

There’s been a lot of playing the “Martyr For Compassion” among liberal Episcopalians since last week’s act by the Anglican Communion. This is not surprising. Still, it can’t be a good sign that people in a church that has been nearly severed from its historic communion are treating this as a Joe Cool moment. It’s startlingly trite and trivializing. But it may not be entirely unreasonable.

Here’s an interesting report from TEC itself, on where its growth is happening, and why. Overall the church is shrinking, and shrinking dramatically. Only a minority of its parishes are growing at all, and those are primarily in the South and the West, which are more religiously conservative than the Northeast and Midwest, the other two regions surveyed. However, the particular parishes that are growing are, by a large margin, the progressive ones.

This suggests to me that the Episcopal brand has become so identified with liberal Christianity that its only place to grow is among religiously inclined progressives. Most of the conservatives who can’t go along with this have already left. On current trends, TEC is on track to reduce itself to a tiny progressive core. For reasons of theological consistency (with its past actions), and marketing to a shrinking audience, defying the global Anglican Communion and embracing a Joe Cool stance makes some sense. I guess. But contemplate, if you will, an America in which to be a member of The Episcopal Church is to make oneself part of the left-wing vanguard.

I am watching this with interest as a recent convert to Anglicanism (the ACNA). In my city (mid-Atlantic city, not too big, not too small), the Anglican parishes are growiing, with several church plants opening over the last few years. Nearly all of the parishes that are doing well, however, are more evangelical in their posture (as opposed to the handful of churches that are significantly more traditional in their style and worship). That’s not say they’ve tossed out traditional worship, or the BCP, but, rather, they are more comfortable with more “modern” rites that don’t seem quite so stodgy to folks either entering the faith, or coming from Protestantism.

One would have to question whether the Episcopal Church even benefits from being part of the the Anglican Communion. It may very well be in its interest to be rid of it.

Look at this way. It is in the financial interest of the Episcopalians to not be burdened with donating to the Anglican Communion. It ratifies their independence from it, something they should have done in like 1783, and it makes them look intelligent in the face of, well, Africans. (It also liberates them from the urge to pray for Ebola.)

I’m surprised the Episcopalian Church did not make the break on their own.

I think there is a small-scale phenomenon of religious progressives joining Episcopalianism. I have had two coworkers over the last few years proudly say they were “recovering Catholics” that now go to Episcopal churches. That’s lovely for them, if somewhat offensive to actual Catholics, but what are the chances their kids will stay in the church? Virtually zilch.

We have also seen this among more prominent public figures. Former NJ governor Jim McGreevy, after a career-ending scandal involving his 20-something national security advisor/lover, left Catholicism and decided to become an Episcopalian priest. I know there have been other examples of this type of conversion in the media, but they all seem to follow the same script. Self-indulgent baby boomer has been waiting for the Catholic Church to get with it but gets tired of that. Naturally, he or she joins the next best thing: a church with a similar aesthetic but the correct views on social justice and sexual morality.

This is not a recipe for a vibrant church. It all has such an end of an era vibe. Episcopalians can be lovely people, but they will vanish without a whisper by mid-century. At least Europeans have had the decency to go straight to secular indifference and not pussyfoot around.

Having personal experience with this, I’ll chime in. I left the church a long time ago, and when I came back, I came back to an episcopal church.

I imagine it’s what Trads would consider progressive–they have had at least one gay marriage ceremony (although before Obergefell, so it was more of a commitment ceremony) but don’t tend to be super political from the pulpit. I know several conservatives who go there, and in a sister church who would probably also be considered progressive, our Republican national legislator attends.

If asked, I would say our church is also very traditional. It has a remarkable choir program (that has had residencies in England) four services per Sunday, Lenten and Advent penitential seasons and a rich and moving liturgical emphasis. It also is committed to social services with opportunities to attend mission trips, a varieties of outreach to the homeless, and a community cupboard.

What I would say makes this church “progressive” isn’t its politics, or the politics of the clergy, it’s the fact that it’s willing to have open discussion about its positions, and tolerate a considerable amount of dissent among the ranks, while still worshiping together in community.

For me, I think what’s so shocking about the Anglican Communion’s decision to sanction the Episcopal church, is that if internally in our church in this historically red state we can have differences of politics even to the sacramental rite level, and still decide that our communion is more important than our disagreements, that the Anglican Communion can’t…well, I don’t understand it.

I’d also say that’s why I find articles like Fr. Longenecker’s in your previous post so frustrating because the caricature of progressive Christians is such a strawman! As a progressive Christian, in what most would consider to be a progressive church, it’s the saturation of the litergy and the commitment to Christ’s walk that makes me choose to be there.

That’s not nominal Christianity. What the progressive episcopal churches are doing in my community (and the growth they’re experiencing!) isn’t a feel good experience, it’s Bible based living of the belief of serving others and establishing a community of believers.

Critics of progressive Christianity can ignore that if they want to, or cluck about our politics, but it sounds more like sour grapes than any repudiation based in fact.

contemplate, if you will, an America in which to be a member of The Episcopal Church is to make oneself part of the left-wing vanguard

To the degree that the Episcopals have often been the American WASP elite at prayer, that is entirely fitting for where the tribe finds itself today.

It would be unfathomable to my departed Episcopal grandparents, but it is very fitting to where the Church has been for most of my life: trending toward the mirror image of Benedict XVI’s “smaller but purer” Catholicism

It will be interesting to see how the new Faith handles the upcoming Schism, and how it independently tries to coherently explore a theology of sacramental matrimony going far beyond mere civil marriage. Acquiescing to civil marriage existing, while expecting a chaste ideal, is vastly different from celebrating and blessing a union presumed to be actively sexual.

Depressing. I’m an Episcopalian. In terms of my civil politics, I’m pretty liberal and am completely pro-LGBT civil rights (marriage, adoption, non-discrimination in housing and employment, the whole nine yards). The Episcopal Church’s love for gay people was a huge reason for why I became an Episcopalian as an adult, and why I’ve remained one. But it wasn’t the only reason. It was important for me to join a church that was holy, catholic, and apostolic, and rooted in the Western tradition and the English heritage. And I was drawn to the church’s very transcendence of politics — to the fact that it encompassed dopey leftists like me as well as hoary old reactionaries, who in consequence talked less about politics and more about religion, theology, spirituality, the supernatural.

I don’t care about maintaining the favor of nutty Nigerian bishops who think gays should be jailed or killed. And while being in communion with Canterbury is important to me, the Anglican Communion beyond that means little. I already know that Christianity transcends the bounds of those with whom I’m in communion, so the presence of absence institutional ties with Anglicans in Lagos or Kampala don’t particularly matter. I’m happy with Anglicanism as tradition like Presbyterianism or Lutheranism, rather than a single communion. But I do worry that the Episcopal Church is irrevocably alienating (1) the Church of England and (2) its own conservative communicants. If conservative Episcopalians are erased and the Episcopal Church becomes an exclusively leftist project, then I fear it may lose far too much. A Jewish friend once told me that he thought Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism all needed one another, to maintain a healthy balance between creativity, reinterpretation, and tradition. The great Protestant churches need that balance too — but too many people on my side (the left) don’t get it.

I attend an Episcopal church because it’s the only one my agnostic husband is comfortable in – I’d rather be Catholic (or Anglican), but he thinks they “take it too seriously,” which is of course the appeal for me. At least at the Episcopal church, though, my kids are saying the confession and saying the Creed each week – that’s not nothing. Our priest(ess) sent around an email about the Anglican decision, and the gist of the email was basically that backwards African bishops were blocking progress toward equality. This may be true (I am all for civil equality insofar as marriage is a civil function with tax repercussions) – but it also smacks of racism and colonialism, which Episcopalians are noted for frowning upon. What happened to all the pluralism and multicultural tolerance? The phrase “hoisted on their own petard” came to mind.

Of course, “Joe Cool” clergy have a nasty habit of getting sexually involved with people that they shouldn’t. Is this really what these people want? And, I thought the whole point of the “inclusive” church was to call in the outcasts. Isn’t empowering and celebrating the “cool kids” counter to that objective? Since when was LGBT “cool”?

Well, then after the 100 here, 80 there and 30 over there join the local Piskie franchise, they’ll decline too.

I say the new PB should issue their equivalent to a motu proprio inviting “groups of Catholics” to join them. I have a feeling, however, that only a handful would take them up on it even if many more would be ideologically inclined that way. There is no way most heretic nuns or clerics would formally leave the Church-only reason anyone cares what they say is because they are formally on the inside and part of Rome. The minute they leave, any cred they had with the media and all that is gone.

“That’s lovely for them, if somewhat offensive to actual Catholics, but what are the chances their kids will stay in the church? Virtually zilch.”

My thoughts exactly. The Catholic outflow:inflow ratio is something like 6:1, last I checked. I suspect TEC is the one benefitting from this, since it is more or less postconciliar-Catholicism-as-chaplain-to-liberal-modernity. But it is rather like the Catholic Church itself benefitting from Mexican immigration. It’ll last a generation before their kids slink off into apostasy like everyone else.

[NFR: Putnam and Campbell point out in “American Grace” that if not for Latino immigration, the US Catholic Church would be collapsing at the same rate as the Protestant Mainline. A lot of ordinary suburban Catholics don’t notice this because there are just so many of them. But the numbers don’t lie. It seems like every third Catholic convert starts a blog — and bully for them! the faith needs enthusiastic witnesses — but the ones who slip away just fade. — RD]

Oh, it would be a huge surprise if TEC were “thrown out of the Anglican Communion” (henceforth “AC”), 3 years from now — or ever.

Why?

1) There is no official definition of AC. The closest one can come is that it consists of those churches whose primates are invited to the Lambeth Conference, or whose members hold positions on the Anglican Consultative Council (“ACC”) (a talkshop) or other AC bureaucratic bodies. The Archbishop of Canterbury is never going to tolerate throwing TEC (or their junior followers, the Anglican Church of Canada (“ACoC”), which craftily avoided condemnation) out of the Communion. That is simply not on.

2) Following on that….the assembled primates (this was not even an official meeting of them, but a “gathering”) have no authority to suspend or expel anybody. True the primates’ resolution “required” TEC members to abstain from participation in, inter alia the ACC. However there are 3 elected members of the ACC from TEC .. and the indication is that that they intend to participate in the next ACC meeting just as usual.

Perhaps +++Welby will persuade them to sit out one meeting. But they will be back.

3) I have read on liberal TEC blogs many liberal TECers saying, “well, to Hell with the Anglican Communion then.” But the clear-eyed realists among TEC revisionists are OK with the outcome, and have no intention of abandoning the AC in a fit of pique.

Why? They are playing a long game. They are expert at kicking the can down the road. They know that the Church of England (“C of E”) will approve same-sex blessings (“SSBs”) within 5 years and same-sex marriage (“SSM”) within 15 (at most). Then, as the Britishers say, the boot will be on the other foot.

Eventually there will be a split between the Global South (“GS”) primates and Canterbury, and two Anglican Communions, one of which will be centred in Nairobi or Kampala or some such place, on a rotating basis. Key problem for +++Welby: that GS communion will have the adherence of some proportion of the Evangelical part of the C of E, which has grown markedly in recent decades. The longer the split can be delayed, the smaller (one must figure) that proportion will be.

That is what this fighting is, in the end, all about, to +++Welby. What proportion of GS primates will leave in the end, what proportion of C of E members will I lose, and can I put all this off so that the split is blamed on my successor?

Let’s keep a couple things in perspective. Two weeks ago it was widely assumed that the Anglican Communion would entirely fracture over this issue and that didn’t happen. Instead, imposing this sanction on the Episcopal church was enough to keep more conservative provinces willing to remain in communion.

And the sanction isn’t that huge of a deal. After the consecration of Gene Robinson the Episcopalian church was suspended from the Anglican Consultative Council for three years. That was ecclesially much more significant than what was imposed last week. And at the end of the three years the suspension was over and they returned to their role on the ACC.

My crystal ball is awfully cloudy but I tend to think that if there was going to be a final split it would have happened then. As it is we’re going to end up muddling through and learning to live with each other. I pray so at least.

I do remember about a year ago reading this blog on a Monday morning and there was a post asking “Has the last Episcopalian been born?” I was thinking “well when I was at church yesterday we baptized seven. So maybe those are the last seven ever, but I doubt it.”

Francis Joseph says:
“And I was drawn to the church’s very transcendence of politics — to the fact that it encompassed dopey leftists like me as well as hoary old reactionaries, who in consequence talked less about politics and more about religion, theology, spirituality, the supernatural.”

Well that was supposed to be the plan, but the moment the progressives were asked to ease back on rewriting the prayer book to suit the latest opinion polls, they decided they were too special to listen to anybody else and took unilateral action in defiance of Lambeth resolutions and any semblance of unity with the broader communion. So fine. They don’t want unity, they don’t get unity.

“I don’t care about maintaining the favor of nutty Nigerian bishops who think gays should be jailed or killed.”

Good, because the same resolution that put TEC in the time-out chair to think about what they’ve done also contained a unanimous statement against the criminalization and punishment of homosexuality, a statement which even those “nutty” Africans agreed upon.

The only thing that kept the Anglican Church of Canada from joining TEC in the time-out chair is that ACoC won’t technically be voting on a formal change to the marriage rites until later this year. I’m not optimistic, though. The progressives will push through the change (because savage Africans have no place telling their enlightened Western overlords what to do, and don’t you dare read any colonialist paternalism into that because we’re progressive and that makes us the good guys), and even more of us will depart ACoC for the Anglican Network.

I don’t understand why we don’t have the schism now. If one’s beliefs about gay life are fundamental, and both, the conservatives who view it as sinful and gays who are living the life of a gay person pretty much do agree on that, why bother waiting for three years? Are the conservatives expecting those who support gays to abandon them? Are the gays expecting the conservative Anglicans from the third world to see the light?

Please. It’s way past time for these two factions to go their separate ways. They are separate religious denominations in all but name.

Not sure what “Joe Cool” is supposed to mean, but if want to name-call then the good old days of orthodox Christianity were when gay people were treated as scum and the conservatives in Africa who want to execute them are, I suppose, the people who really represent Christ.

Oh I see– it’s the cartoon. But that sort of flippancy is, IMO, really a kind of anger. Traditional Christianity has nothing to be proud of in its treatment of gay people and I’d have said that when I was still a traditionalist on this issue.

I’m a bit shocked that it’s so easy to dismiss the African church as a group of ignorant savages. Liberal rage over African discrimination against gays must outweigh liberal guilt over the legacy of colonialism and poverty in Africa.

“…trending toward the image of Benedict’s “smaller but purer” church.”

Darth Thulhu:
This sentiment is often attributed to Benedict, but can you give a citation that he said (or believed) that the Church should be so? Here is an interesting discussion of the above on the left leaning Commonweal blog from a few years back:https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/smaller-purer-church

“I’m a bit shocked that it’s so easy to dismiss the African church as a group of ignorant savages. Liberal rage over African discrimination against gays must outweigh liberal guilt over the legacy of colonialism and poverty in Africa.”

That’s because colonialism is nothing to feel guilty about, rather it is to be celebrated, and the Africans do poverty just fine on their own without any outside help.

res sexual morality: There are two kinds of Christians, those who affirm gay relationships, and those who just keep them hidden. PS, those who abuse children are a little more likely to be in the second group.

res abortion: There are those who are not comfortable with abortion, but reluctant to invent phony biblical reasons to ban it. And those who rage about the evils of abortion, but who typically avail themselves of abortion in about the same numbers as the former group.

Well, I still think of the Episcopalians as the licensed Establishment preachers who called up the sheriff and roamed the colonial country side whipping Baptist ministers in the midst of mass revival meetings for “preaching without a license.” Good riddance to the damn Tories. One the other hand:

The Episcopal Church’s love for gay people was a huge reason for why I became an Episcopalian as an adult, and why I’ve remained one. But it wasn’t the only reason. It was important for me to join a church that was holy, catholic, and apostolic, and rooted in the Western tradition and the English heritage.

To those who are addicted to dividing the world into two camps, explain how these sentiments all came out of the same mouth.

In other historical footnotes, there was no established tradition in Africa of subjecting homosexuality to violent penalties. The King of Buganda at the time of French and British penetration (no pun intended) got mad at the missionaries because converts among his male harem refused to be defiled any longer. So whatever the African Anglicans are mouthing now, they got from British missionaries. Sort of like, Brittany, which refused the rule of the Kings of France for the longest time, was the last bastion of royalism against successive republics. Or the free and independent Cossacks becoming the devoted janissaries of the Czar.

But when all the dust settles, future generations will wonder why everyone in the 21st century made such a big deal about the fact that there are accidental hormonal deviations from the heterosexual norm of the human species.

“Liberal rage over African discrimination against gays must outweigh liberal guilt over the legacy of colonialism and poverty in Africa.”

No, it does not, but the colonies are no longer colonies. They had a good fifty to sixty years to get their act together but their corrupt governments have failed their people, playing off of the ethnic and religious divisions among them.

Most of these laws however, date back to the colonialists. The British imposed criminal sanctions on same-sex sexual intimacy and the African governments which had them decided to maintain them, and they are encouraged to keep them by some Americans like Scott Lively so I wouldn’t link colonialism to only one side.

“What happened to all the pluralism and multicultural tolerance?”

Criminalizing one whose cultural practices differ from that of the majority is by self definition an offense against tolerance and multiculturalism. I am sorry but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and practices like “corrective rape” ” anal probing” and beating people who are gay, like whipping them, stoning them, or throwing them off roof tops, can only be described as savage acts worthy of condemnation. Savagery us what it is and I have no problem calling those who engage in such activities “savages.”

It would be nice if the same conservative bishops who both oppose homosexuality and signed onto this resolution which also opposes its criminalization would find it within themselves to speak out against the atrocities which are committed in their name when they are home.

All things considered the Episcipal Church and the Anglicans should go their separate ways. They don’t agree on some fundamental questions concerning the “revealed” word of God and how it should be interpreted. There are de facto, two religions here – an Episcopalian Church and the Anglican one. They can work together on common goals whenever they can, just as Catholics,Protestants, Mormons, Jews, and Muslims work together on common goals, but they are not in communion with one another.

“…trending toward the image of Benedict’s “smaller but purer” church.”

Darth Thulhu:
This sentiment is often attributed to Benedict, but can you give a citation that he said (or believed) that the Church should be so?

I don’t think it’s a matter of Benedict thinking the Church should be so, but rather a resignation to the expectation that it will be so, if it stays close to what he thinks is important in opposition to the modern zeitgeists.

The primary quote I’ve seen on the matter is not from Benedict’s pontificate, but from his earlier career as a Cardinal under Pope Saint John Paul II. There was an interview-book of Ratzinger by Peter Seewald in 1996, that got an English translation in 1997.

Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millenium, ISBN 9780898706406

In it, Cardinal Ratzinger was quoted to say:

Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that let God in.

It isn’t passionately yearning to be smaller and purer, but rather sadly expecting that fighting to be pure will consequently result in being smaller and less popular.

In the same regard, I expect that the Episcopalians are entirely willing to accept a smaller congregation, if that is the consequence of staying True to their conception of the Good.

Rick, I haven’t heard anyone dismiss Africans as ignorant savages. I have heard people condemn laws that put homosexuals in prison for life. Referring to this as ” discrimination” is a bit understated, wouldn’t you say? As for liberal guilt over colonialism, sorry, but liberals are capable of holding multiple thoughts in our head at the same time.

The SCGS (Small Church, Getting Smaller) meme as commonly used among B16’s fanboys has a different center of gravity than with B16 himself. Then again, that’s not the only such this is true of with regard to B16 vs his fanboys.

Rod, I was objecting to your own trivializing of the issue– the way you present it that stupid cartoon is supposed to show the essential silliness of the Episcopalians, yet some of those places where they practice good old- fashioned traditional values church leaders support prison sentences or even the death penalty for gays. That is why liberal Christians find it so easy to dismiss the Anglican communion–they condemn the horror of gay people getting married in a church, but apparently don’t get too upset about major human rights violations. So I didn’t see your cartoon. I usually don’t look that closely at your images and just go directly to the words, which in this case left out the human rights violations which are the heart of the issue for liberals.

Commonweal is not merely “left leaning”, it is only less overtly heretical than National Catholic Reporter and U.S. Catholic.

The comments referenced come from some comments he made in 1969. The quote below comes from “Faith and the Future”, an anthology of sorts published by Ignatius in 2009.

“The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”

“Smaller but purer” is kind of a gloss of that quote, though I don’t know if it really captures the essence of it. God often works through a faithful remnant and then Fr. Ratzinger, accurately I would say, saw the future in which the grand institutional Church that was a huge part of every Catholic’s life (and indeed, the whole world’s life to one degree or another) was fading and there would come a time in which we’d find ourselves back in the catacombs (figuratively). Only the people who really and truly believed could be expected to be part of the Church when it was no longer part of social convention.

They should be glad to be kicked out of a group that is now dominated by pre-modern 3rd-worlders, the People that The Enlightenment Passed By. Civilized Euro-American people really have little in common with fundamentalistic 3rd-worlders. Maybe this will get TEC to drop their diversity-worship and embrace and be proud of their European heritage (critical thinking being the crown jewel of that heritage).

One point that several posters above may have in mind is that the institutional structures of the Anglican Communion date back only to the late 19th century, and the Primates’ Meeting is a lot newer even than that. All those organizations are a symptom of the Oxford Movement’s fanboy crushing on Roman Catholicism, which in turn was a frantic attempt to differentiate Anglicans from Methodists. That wasn’t altogether a bad thing- it helped us move on from the first three hundred years of the Church of England, when the dominant trend was to minimize everything that differentiated us from the Presbyterians, and allowed Anglicans to regain a clearer sense of the sacramental.

But all the stuff that’s supposed to set the Archbishop of Canterbury up as a shadow pope is just plain silly, and it no longer does anything but get in the way of our ecumenical outreach to other branches of the Protestant movement. As such, these structures are impediments to Christian unity, and should be abolished as soon as possible.

[NFR: This is funny. The infinitely greater impediment to Christian unity is the embrace of homosexuality. — RD]

I joined the Episcopal church in 2008 and we have a lot of people in their ’80’s who are cradle Episcopalians. They are not fussed about the gays–to them the liberalization around divorce and allowing female clergy were the world-shakers. They are also pretty well versed in scripture and like to point out that the Bible is clearer on female roles in the church and on divorce than it is on gays, so as long as nobody frightens the horses they are OK.

And it could be my parish but the preaching is quite orthodox. Our new rector even freely refers to “spiritual forces of darkness” as a reality and the oldsters and the younguns get it while the earnest white liberal baby boomers look like they smelled a bad smell.

“They should be glad to be kicked out of a group that is now dominated by pre-modern 3rd-worlders, the People that The Enlightenment Passed By. Civilized Euro-American people really have little in common with fundamentalistic 3rd-worlders. Maybe this will get TEC to drop their diversity-worship and embrace and be proud of their European heritage (critical thinking being the crown jewel of that heritage).”

Lemme shorten that up for you-the darkies are too busy running from lions and squeezing out kids they can’t feed to be as smart as 60 something suburbanites with a “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” bumper sticker on their Volvo wagon.

There, much less sanctimonious BS.

Acillius,

“One point that several posters above may have in mind is that the institutional structures of the Anglican Communion date back only to the late 19th century, and the Primates’ Meeting is a lot newer even than that. All those organizations are a symptom of the Oxford Movement’s fanboy crushing on Roman Catholicism, which in turn was a frantic attempt to differentiate Anglicans from Methodists.”

No it was some real smart cookies that came to the realization that Christianity is not Protestant but not having quite the gumption to come right out and say the emperor has no clothes, so we’ll act and look like Catholics but thumb our noses to the pope. Some had the gumption and ended up swimming the Tiber. Some are stayed back there, making it seem to all the world they were more Catholic than the Pope, all the while burning with white hot desire for the day Senpai would actually notice them.

The Episcopal Church has apparently purged its YouTube files of a video of half a dozen or so transsexual priests giving testimonials of why they are even superior to those engaged in the wars against white privilege and . . . whatever. This is all I can find, for the present.

As Rev. Carolyn said, “No one is outside God’s love.” How do we arrive at such different places as Christians while all affirming this statement? My Church would say that Pontius Pilate’s question is the only one that ultimately matters: “What is truth?” Is there an answer? That is ultimately the question that separates the Left from the Right, since apart from the question of the existence of Truth, everything is merely logistics and damage control.

The conservatives in GAFCON (Global Anglican Futures) have done not just the Anglican Communion but the whole Church Universal one great favour: they have diminished the middle ground. The church in Uganda that pressed hard to kick out the Episcopalians and the Canadian Anglicans doesn’t just refuse to marry Gay men and Lesbians; they won’t bury them, either. They stand for and support active persecution.

Human beings have few deeper needs than simple connection with others. You can’t suppress it without seriously harsh sanctions. If you accept same-sex orientation as a medical fact, as the evidence strongly suggests, then you have two choices: find a compassionate way to help those with that orientation live fulfilling lives, or else use the law to suppress them. To see what the latter choice would look like, consider Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill. Western societies tried “don’t ask don’t tell” middle ground in the seventies and eighties: the tacit permission to have Gay sex without any support for same-sex relationships led predictably to promiscuity, with dire public health consequences. Most American traditionalists really want to compromise. I think that as time goes by, we will begin to understand the middle ground many long for does not exist.

The Snoopy Option … that is funny.
I left TEC several years ago. The parish in my town was more concerned with cocktail parties over gospel/theology. I’m now affiliated with a small Anglican parish that is very traditional in worship. That is a hard thing to market in 2016 Tuscaloosa ..we don’t do Power Point or have a juice bar (reference BBC’s “Rev.” series).